Interesting link on the coverage maps that appear in a Verizon commercial. Telling the truth but not the whole picture with a map. Glad to see people getting worked up about maps!

Here's an interesting site where you can directly link to each of the major carriers coverage maps. No shortage of terrible cartographic design here - looks like each company has put some serious effort into making things look as "covered" as possible.

I figure they must be doing these in house, or possibly outsourcing the work to the cheapest offshore bidder. I would bet though that it's in house by the folks who manage their infrastructure, who are surely using big enterprise GIS systems to organize all their parcel data and whatnot.

It would be interesting to know whether or not the design of the maps is shaped at all by their marketing teams, since surely they would see the advantage of making things look better than they really are (and we know they're tuned in to the power of maps now that they're using them in commercials to make their arguments).